Beaver Mountain

    Beaver Mountain is one of the prominent landmarks around McBride.  I have taken hundreds of photos of the peak over the years, but this is one of my favorites.   It was a very clear, crisp day which emphasizes all the contours and slides of the mountain.  I really like the snow-dusted trees that cover the flanks.

You can view my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Lifelong Interests

    I was looking though some old stuff trying to come up with a topic for this blog, when I came upon this photo from my high school newspaper, probably printed back in 1965.  I was really keen on folk music at the time and organized a group of classmates who had the same interest, into a “Folk Club” where we periodically got together to play music.  The photo made me realized that I still had the same interest in music that I had way back then.

    I no longer have a banjo, now I play mandolin or guitar, but I still love to get together with other musicians to play.  We do it every Tuesday.  I am not the only retiree still clinging to old loves.

    I know people my age that are still buying old cars and fixing them up just like they did in high school, because they enjoy messing around with cars, and others who still drag their old bodies out on the ice to play hockey with that childhood dream still in their head.  My cousin, who as a child was fascinated with tractors, doesn’t have a farm but owns a handful of the machines because he still loves them.

    I guess we are just hardwired to like certain things and that doesn’t change with age.

Art was another of my lifelong interests, check out my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

A Good Winter Dog Toy

    Skye really likes to chase balls.  In the summer we throw a tennis ball for her to run after.  Throwing a tennis ball in the winter however, doesn’t work too well because it doesn’t bounce in the snow and can disappear in the white fluff.

    The blue ball with the hexagons that you see in the photo is a great solution.  It tends to stay on top of the snow, it is easy for Skye to snag it because of all of it’s holes, and Skye likes to have a tug-of-war with me by holding it in her mouth when I am pulling on the other side of the ball.  It is a great winter dog toy.

You can see my paintings at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

No Water?

    One of the things we have learned to fear the most during winter is loosing our water.  We get our water from a waterfall, with an underground waterline 1.25 kms (.75 of a mile) long.  I am always glad to see a big snowfall before a hard cold spell because it insulates the ground, thus helping to prevent a freeze-up of our waterline.  

    On Thursday evening when we turned on our tap we noticed that our water pressure was really beginning to drop.  We filled all kinds of containers and pots, knowing that soon the water itself would stop flowing.  This was a very distressing occurrence.  It meant one of three possibilities had happened: 

1.   There was not enough water flowing into our water catching culvert on the waterfall.
2.   The screen on our water intake pipe was clogged with debris.
3.   Our waterline had frozen up--this was by far the worst possibility.  One winter when this happened we didn’t get our water back until the middle of April.

    

    Because it was dark, walking and working up on the waterfall is very dangerous, even during the seasons when there is no ice, so I decided to wait until the following morning and daylight before trying to tackle our loss of water problem.  Of course, thinking about trying to solve the problem gave me a very sleepless night, and meant going outside in the cold to go to the bathroom.  I was happy that I built an outhouse years ago.

    Bruce, a neighbor and I hiked up to the waterfall the next morning.  The photo above shows what the waterfall looked like.  Our culvert was completely covered with a dome of thick ice.  I knew it would be and had brought an axe to chop through it, which we had to do so we could see what was happening in our culvert.  Bruce did most of the hard chopping of the ice with the ax, (photo below) it was hard work, the ice was 2 feet (60cm) thick.  Finally we broke through the ice dome into the the open space below and we could see that our culvert was still overflowing with water, so that wasn’t the problem.

    We pulled up the watergate that drained our culvert and then we could see that our screened intake was all clogged up with debris.  This was a big relief, because it was something we could deal with.  I climbed through the small hole we had chopped in the ice and got into our culvert, where I removed the clogged screened intake and replacing it with a new one.  We then closed the watergate and watched as the water slowly filled the culvert and our waterline.

    I gave Joan a call from the falls and with great relief in her voice, she told us that the water was again flowing from our taps.  It was a wonderful feeling to know we had succeeded, we gathered up all our tools and hiked back to the truck, happy with the knowledge that we again had water.

My paintings can be seen at:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Cold Pad

    The blue cloth you see in the photo is normally called a “Hot Pad,”  but in this case however it is really a cold pad.   We have a fairly small refrigerator, and whenever I make soup in a big pot, often there is not enough room in the fridge to store it, so during the winter I just put the pot outside on the balcony.

    The soup was outside yesterday when the outside temperature was -24C (-11F).  I was not about to hold the pot with my bare hands to carry the frigid metal container down to the kitchen (very cold metal feels like it is burning the skin) so I got a hot pad to protect my hands.

Check out my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca

Mea Culpa

    Yesterday I wrote my blog denigrating the month of February because of its lack of anything positive.  A few hours after I wrote the blog, we went out for our afternoon walk, and I was just blown away at how perfect that February day was.  It was a bit cold (-9C, 15F), but the sun was very bright, the colors crisp and intense, and there was not even a breeze.  It was one of the most winter beautiful days I can remember.

    As a result, I was so busy taking photos that I fell way behind Joan and Skye as who continued their walk down the road.  It was a great start to February.

You can see my paintings at www.davidmarchant.ca

February Begins

    Of all of the twelve months, I think that February is my least favorite.  I can’t really think of much to recommend about it.  It does feature Valentine’s Day, and Joan usually makes a flan for me, and the days are beginning to get longer, but other than that it doesn’t offer much.  Weather here will be cold and it doesn’t give any signs that Spring it just around the corner.  It is something that just has to be endured.

    This February began with clear skies and cold temperatures (-15C, +5F).  The snow is crunchy and hard.  I am hoping that the next 28 days pass quickly.

You can view my paintings:  www.davidmarchant.ca